leftcoast's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- KANT'S PRE-CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MIND Kant�s position can be summarized concisely. His pre-critical philosophy of mind rests on two novel claims about action and change and two metaphysical assumptions. According to the first novel claim, it is possible for bodies to act without causing motion, and it is possible for bodies to be acted upon without being caused to move. According to the second, every change in our world involves the exercise of a "transeunt inner force", an externally-directed force that affects the inner states of the substance it is directed against. According to Kant�s pre-critical metaphysics, bodies are substances composed of monads and souls are immaterial simple substances. Using all four of these claims, Kant concluded that there is no mystery about how an immaterial souls can cause change in material bodies: like all the other cases of action in our world, a soul acts on a body by exerting its force in a manner that causes transeunt inner change in the bodies� constituent monads. He gave a similar account of the possibility of bodies acting on souls: a body acts on a soul by exerting force on the soul in a manner that causes the souls to undergo transeunt inner change. 2:44 p.m. - 2005-05-20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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